


Wandering Soldier Mine

by magicalmartha



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23315989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalmartha/pseuds/magicalmartha
Summary: When the battle's done, where go the soldiers?Or,Felix is having trouble adjusting (but what else is new?)
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Dedue Molinaro
Kudos: 59





	Wandering Soldier Mine

There are not a lot of places in the world for warriors, when the battle’s done and the dead counted. 

It irks Felix to see how well his former classmates acclimate to peacetime. The Boar, especially - although Felix hasn’t called him that in a very long time. Dimitri, then, King Dimitri and his Archbishop Queen, heralding in a new reign of peace and prosperity over the United Kingdom of Faerghus. Sylvain taking his place as the Margrave Gautier, leading his House with a (from all accounts) remarkable amount of grace and competency. Claude, off somewhere in Almyra, probably brokering the kind of relationship with the Kingdom that historians will discuss for ages after. To say nothing of Ashe, Raphael, Ingrid...little toy soldiers, all grown up and serving as knights or merchants or teachers or bloody Kings of the Realm.

It’s enough to make Felix want to vomit.

Sometimes Felix feels like he died on the field, and everything that came after has been some kind of vision his brain created to distract him from the reality. It has been surreal to the point of dissociation to find himself in charge of running a whole territory, when this was a mantle he never should have had to shoulder, on top of the sudden void he feels as a soldier with no war to fight. His father was the Duke, Glenn the successor, and he - well, where was he? Before Glenn’s death, he supposes he could have been a Captain of the Guard, a knight in service to his family or his country.

The week leading up to Dimitri’s coronation is a balancing act between how tense Felix actually is and how desperately he doesn’t want anyone to see. He has been officially the Lord of House Fraldarius for almost half a year, and has been so busy he has been able to ignore communications from his old schoolmates (and comrades-in-arms) easily. But this, the start of everything they fought and died for, he cannot avoid. 

He goes to the Capital. He stays in the palace at Dimitri’s invitation. He puts on a smile and, if he seems a little tight around the eyes, well, he’s landed a whole new role, hasn’t he? That’s enough to cause the shadows under his eyes, the stiffness in his shoulders.

“Let’s get a drink while we’re here,” Ashe says companionably, gripping his shoulder when they arrive. “Who knows when you’ll have a free week again, eh?”

He agrees with no intention of doing so.

There’s only so long he can avoid Dimitri in his own house. Between His Highness and the Professor, who is mostly tied up with Church business but finds time to greet her former students warmly, he’s eventually corralled into a pretty, glass-walled gazebo during tea time. 

“It’s been a while,” Dimitri says, warmly.

“Hn.” If this whole conversation is going to be small talk, Felix may fling himself through the glass. He fiddles with his tea up.

“You’re all right?” Felix says, abruptly. Dimitri looks up, startled. He smiles, the fabric of his eyepatch wrinkingling.

“I am. All of this...it’s more than I ever thought. It’s more than I deserve, really. Are you, my friend?”

The teacup in Felix’s hand trembles. “It’s a lot to get used to, but I’m getting by.”

It isn’t too long before Dimitri is called away to attend to some detail or another, and Felix is saved from too much scrutiny by a man he once trusted with his life.

The only time he sees Sylvain is at the ceremony, when they both stand with the other heads of houses in attendance. Sylvain spends the whole time trying to catch Felix’s eye, who spends the whole time studying a scuff on the polished stone floor.

What follows the dissolution of the Empire and Dimitri’s coronation are endless weeks of paperwork. Rodrigue was a meticulous leader, so Felix doesn’t have too hard of a time picking up where his father left off, but it takes a long time for him to find a rhythm between hearing the grievances of his people, investigating what problems need to be solved, and figuring out the best plan for implementation. He does it, though. Rodrigue and Glenn were good examples; whenever he’s unsure, he frames the question in his mind: “What would Glenn have done?”

Most of the time, it works.

There is one moment when Ingrid comes to visit, a year after the end of everything. Felix has some vague notion that he was forewarned about this, but he doesn’t remember, and honestly Ingrid might not have sent a note in fear of startling him away.

She leaves Dedue at home. Apparently either she or her husband must be at the King’s side always, and anyway, Felix doesn’t retain much fondness for the stoic Duscuran. Not that he doesn’t like Dedue, per se, but -

“Felix, are you in there? I said, I’m pretty sure Dimitri could find you a retainer, if you needed some help around here. It’s a big job, running a territory.”

Alone, she doesn’t say. Ingrid’s head is tilted to one side, the steam from the chamomile tea he served coiling up from the cup in her hands. There is worry, and affection in her eyes, and Felix can only glance at her face before looking down into his own cup.

He gives himself a little shake. He also unclenches his fist, in which he has accidentally crumpled the letter Ingrid brought from the King. In it, he asks Felix to summer at the capital, waxing poetic about some upcoming festival he’s hosting in Fhirdiad. He mentions their Professor, and how she’d love to see Felix again. He says Sylvain will be visiting, and isn’t it about time for another reunion?

There was a time when Felix would snort at all of it, would hiss something disparaging. But they’re all grown, now, and the war dulled many of his sharp edges.

“I’m fine, there’s no need to impose on Dimitri’s hospitality like that. If I decide to hire a retainer I’m sure I can find someone suitable without bothering the King.” He pushes the letter back towards Ingrid, who hesitatingly smooths out the wrinkles. He continues, “And please pass on my regrets, but I don’t think I’ll be able to leave quite yet. You know how it is.” The words are bitter, and he takes a sip of tea to wash the taste away. She lets him see the disappointment on her face, which pricks him enough that he invites her to stay the night.

It makes him feel like his skin doesn’t fit. Standing on ceremony, hosting delegations, learning the language of nobility that his mouth can’t get the feel of. He invites Ingrid to spar the next day, and the hour that passes as their lances clash is the most himself he’s felt in months. It’s good for her, too, and he can see the shadows lift slightly from her eyes when she takes her leave.

Another year passes. He does paperwork. He facilitates land disputes. His old schoolmates float through his territory. He hosts Dimitri’s retinue for several days, on their way to some diplomatic mission in Sreng. He declines to see the King outside of formal dinner engagements, and when he does he clumsily circumvents the probing questions about his welfare from Dimitri and the Archbishop. At the end of the week, he clasps hands with Dimitri but doesn’t meet his eyes.

After the company leaves, so does he.

*

There is no plan, there is no preparation. He is sitting at his desk, a broad, dark thing of heavy oak, covered in neat stacks of paper. He is meant to be signing something. With the war over, he knows he is meant to take up his father’s seat in the Fraldarius Dukedom, in order to stabilize and rebuild the territory. He has done so - the mechanics are mind-numbingly obvious - to fairly widespread acclaim. He has done his duty to the King, helped his territory on the way back to normalcy. The document in front of him goes blurry and his mind goes numb, and he realizes...it doesn’t matter anymore. The heavy lifting is done.

He sets his pen down. He picks up his cloak. He straps on his sword. And walks out of the castle.

At the cusp of Fraldarius territory, he hesitates. But only for a moment, and only because it is his last chance to decide to take a horse. He’s never been much for riding, but concedes that it might be more pragmatic when he doesn’t truly know where he’s going or how long it will take to get there. At the very least, he knows he’s going south - there’s nothing north of him except Sreng and Gautier, and at this very moment in his life he thinks he would rather set himself on fire than try and explain to Sylvain what is happening in his head.

He buys a horse. He goes south.

*

For all of his self-important thoughts about oh, just ride away, forget it all he finds himself slowly circling the capital in ever widening loops, never straying too far. Maybe he will, one day. His leash still feels tight to Fhirdiad, and the souls still living there.

He’s four or five days’ ride away, somewhere near the foot of the mountains, when he realizes where he’s ended up. A small village in the shadow of the Charon mountain range, only a few short days away from...

Garreg Mach. He stares at the silhouette of the monastery. Really? This is where his unconscious mind wills him to go? _Here?_

Something in his brain echoes. Something about a school? He is still hesitating at the gate when he sees a familiar silhouette making their way to him. A silhouette that resolves itself in a cloud of freshly baked smells, honeyed blonde hair, and modesty veils.

Mercedes doesn’t ask before embracing him. She doesn’t ask why he’s come, or what he’s doing there, or anything at all. He wonders if that’s because Dimitri sent her notice that he might show up, and decides he doesn’t care. After a moment he hugs her back, and they just stand there, in the light of the setting sun, just being close to each other.

After a bit, he doesn’t know how long, she leans back and takes him in. Her eyes pass over his hair, messily tied in a knot at the nape of his neck. At the shadows under his eyes. At the dust coating his riding clothes. At his boots, worn from travel. And at the swords, crossed over his back, meticulously clean and noticeable against his overall weariness.

Mercedes rests a hand against his cheek. He closes his eyes, briefly, and lets himself accept the warmth of it. 

“Oh, Felix. Haven’t you let yourself rest, even once?”

He wants to tell her yes. He wants to say, he’s been doing nothing but resting. He wants to make the worry in her eyes go away, so that she’ll stop looking at him so intently. 

He says nothing, just stands there with his eyes closed and her hand cupping his cheek. It feels nice. 

It feels like home.

*

After the war, Mercedes returned to Garreg Mach as a teacher to younger students. She expanded the scope of the Academy to take in children orphaned by the war, and now oversees their education and helps find work placement for the older teens. Any who are suited for it continue to the Officers Academy, regardless of nobility status.

Felix is in a bit of awe, and feeling a small measure of guilt. Mercedes was a person with whom he grew close with during the war, and afterward has had almost no contact with. And yet, she offers no recrimination, simply shows him to an available room (not in the dormitories, thank goodness, that’s a level or nostalgia he’s not ready for yet) and gives him chores when he asks if there’s anything he can do.

He helps.

He makes tea, he does laundry. He cleans the horse stalls, feeds the animals. He doesn’t do the grocery shopping or anything else that would force him out into the surrounding village, but he cooks a little, keeps the fire stoked and the woodpile stocked. He washes dishes. He helps.

He knows that the work he was doing in Fraldarius was important, but it was...distant. Here, at Mercedes’ school, he can see the results of his labor immediately. The work moves from his hands to the lives of the people he’s helping, not separated by sheaves of paper and ink and distance. He doesn’t have to think for this work, he just has to _do._

He has no sense of time until dinner one evening, where he and Mercedes sit down for their usual quiet meal together. They don’t talk much - the biggest difference between Mercedes now and Mercedes then seems to be that she’s content to let the silence sit, without needing to fill it. Some nights, it makes Felix more inclined to talk, and they have conversations about books, or something that happened in a lesson that day. Most of the time, they eat in companionable silence.

Tonight, before she starts cutting the meat on her plate, Mercedes glances up. “You know, it’s Saint Cethleann’s Day tomorrow.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t know that.

She hesitates, sets her utensils aside. She folds her hands in her lap and looks at him. “I thought it might be nice to ride into Fhirdiad to -”

He stands up and walks out the door.

Mercedes watches him go. She doesn’t think he’ll go far, not yet. But she’s afraid he’ll reach his breaking point before he ever returns to the arms of the people who love him.

She’s afraid he’ll burn himself to ash before admitting that he needs them.

Later that night, she finds him in the training yard. He’s hacking at a practice dummy and there are pieces of two or three wooden practice swords littering the ground around him. The sword he wields currently is showing signs of cracking, and when he pauses to line up his stance again, Mercedes can see his limbs trembling. She waits until he finally drops the practice sword and offers him a towel. She eyes the practice dummy.

“Whose face are you seeing, that’s driving you so viciously?” Her voice is low and soothing. Felix pants, bending his knees, stretching out his shoulders.

“No one.” It’s the truth. There’s been no one in his life for too long for anyone to inspire anger, or drive him like that. Mercedes blinks, and then nods.

“Emptiness can be almost as bad, sometimes.” She loops an arm around his waist, despite the sweat soaking through his clothes, and helps him back to his room. She hovers at the doorway, uncharacteristically shy about saying the next thing that must be said. 

“What,” Felix snaps, because old habits die hard in the comfort of a childhood home.

“I think,” she says gently, “that if you showed up on Sylvain’s door tomorrow, he would offer you a cup of tea.”

Felix lies awake long after she leaves, turning those words over in his head. He wakes before sunrise, packs a sandwich, and leaves a note. When Mercedes finds it, her first thought will be, _He wouldn’t have left word before_ , and hopes this is a good sign.

*

When Sylvain hears there’s a madman charging up the road to his home, his heart leaps with hope. When he gets a better description from his Head of the Guard, he almost sings outloud. And when the head of his kitchen storms in to complain that the highwayman besetting their doors is scaring her staff, he has to hug himself to keep from bursting out the door.

Getting Felix to come to him has always felt like baiting a wild animal. Too much too soon, and he’s scared off. Too little, and he may ignore your offering out of spite and hardheadedness. Sylvain knows ruefully now that this past year has been far too little, for any of them.

He hopes Felix will stay long enough for Sylvain to tell him that.

Felix stalks up and down the courtyard for an hour. Sylvain watches him from a window, because several of his staff have nervously reported the crazy dark-haired swordsman. They’re afraid he’s going to start cutting heads off willy-nilly.

“No,” Sylvain says idly. “There’s really only one head he’s after.”

He won’t come in, though. Sylvain sends several different people to try and escort Felix to his drawing room, because he’s the kind of person that has a drawing room and he may as well make use of it. 

Felix refuses. After he sends the fourth maid crying, Sylvain heaves a sigh and finally goes outside to where his boneheaded best friend is circling like a lion in a gladiator pit.

“Are you done terrorizing my staff yet, you absolute boneheaded moron?”

Felix whirls around and rushes him. It takes him completely by surprises, and he lets out a whoof of air as Felix bears him to the ground, shoulder low and in his gut. His lungs empty reflexively when his back hits the dirt, and instinct takes over.

Sylvain wraps his arms around Felix’s shoulders and uses his momentum to tumble the smaller man over his head. He rolls over and bounces up onto his feet, sucking in air just in time for Felix to kick his foot out and land a sharp blow to his shin. He dodges out of the way of the follow-up kick and swings at Felix when he gets back up and bullies into Sylvain’s personal space. Felix knocks his punch away and swings a haymaker towards the side of Sylvain’s head. He bobs under it and headbutts Felix in his chest, who topples backward and lands a lucky cuff to Sylvain’s face on his way down.

Felix sprawls out in the dirt. Sylvain leans over, hands on his knees so his bleeding nose doesn’t drip onto his white shirt. They’re both heaving, drawing in large breaths and eyeballing each other.

Sylvain straightens up, sighs (again), and extends his hand to Felix. “C’mon. I need ice for my nose.”

*

They skip Sylvain’s office and instead hole up in the kitchen, after Sylvain quietly escorts the two cooks out with some whispered words. Felix holds ice wrapped in a towel on the back of his head where he landed on it, glaring at the other man as he cleans his face and gets another ice pack. He continues to glare through narrowed eyes as Sylvain pulls up a stool and sits across from him, keeping the kitchen island between the two of them.

“I’d offer you tea, but my hands are a bit full at the moment.”

Felix stares at him through an eye swiftly turning black and blue. Sylvain shrugs, and settles the ice on his face more comfortably. After a few more minutes, when he’s pretty certain his nose won’t drip on anything, he gathers a tea service and heats some water. He pulls out a packet of the four-spice blend that he keeps constantly in stock and fresh, and watches Felix out of the corner of his eye as it brews and the warm, spicy scent spills out of the teapot and fills the room.

Felix will not start crying, he won’t, he won’t, he won’t….at the smell of his favorite tea, he might. He takes a cup from Sylvain wordlessly, and stares into the amber liquid. Sylvain continues bustling around the kitchen, as much from nervous energy as from a desire to offer something, anything, to make sure Felix stays right here in his kitchen.

At some point, the atmosphere reaches tension capacity, and finally snaps.

“How.” Felix snaps, almost barks. “How are you fine? How are you doing okay? How…” Felix’s grip tightens on the tea cup. He swallows. “How are you managing to be...this?”

Sylvain quirks one red eyebrow. “Be what? Be me? Be Margrave Gautier? Be...what, Felix?” He snaps a cookie in half and ignores the crumbs on the table. “I’m what I have to be. So are you. After Glenn and Miklan…” _Died._ “I did for Gautier like you did for Fraldarius. What we had to, to keep on.”

Felix’s mouth twists. “That isn’t what I mean.” It is, but it’s also a much smaller part. “Why haven’t you come to see me in the past two years?”

Sylvain is startled by the question. “I didn’t think you wanted anyone to. You’ve been rude as hell every time Dimitri has tried to give you the time of day, and Ingrid almost cried when you sent her packing after less than a day.” Felix winces. He hadn’t realized that had gone so poorly. “We...I guess we figured that when you were ready, you’d come to us.”

 _But when has Felix ever come to me?_ He realizes again, belatedly. His own metaphor: a wild animal won’t approach without an invitation. How much space is too much space?

“It felt like...it felt like you all had lives to go to, like you didn’t...how did you leave it behind?” Felix is quiet now. Sylvain is still, waiting, watching him. “I wasn’t meant for leadership. I’m not, I’m not like you,” he spits out harshly. “I’m not like you, or Dimitri, raised expecting to take on this responsibility. It was supposed to be Glenn. I was supposed to...I was supposed to have more time.”

Sylvain shrugs delicately. “We don’t get to choose our burdens. And Felix,” he says, hesitatingly, “there’s never any shame in asking for help.”

The red on Felix’s neck could fry an egg. “I should be able to do this on my own, it’s nothing more than -”

“Oh, bullshit.”

His head snaps up. Sylvain is standing, hands on the counter, leaning into what he’s saying so that maybe, maybe Felix will hear him this time.

“We’ve grown in so many ways and you still think anyone, you still think I, would think less of you for asking for _help?_ ” He curls his hands into fists, leaning on his knuckles. “Since that cannot, that absolutely cannot, be your real problem, why don’t you just ask the question, Felix?”

It’s a gamble. And Sylvain thinks he’s lost when Felix turns away again, and his jaw locks up in anticipation of what he thinks is coming next.

Felix isn’t looking at Sylvain when he says this, so he misses the way that Sylvain’s face melts, watching him. He doesn’t see the way Sylvain’s face absolutely shatters when he asks -

“How did you leave me behind?”

Because that’s it, that’s the question, the only thing that matters, the heart of why Felix has been slowly turning into a ghost behind the walls of his family’s ancestral home. His family died, and his found family moved on, and he couldn’t. And no one came back to get him.

Warm hands are on his face suddenly, lifting him so that he has to look at Sylvain, at the deep eyes and caring smile and oh, the depth of that gaze. Felix should feel trapped but he’s drowning. Sylvain has many smiles and Felix has seen them all, but never this one - this one that’s warm and sure, and loving, and absolutely true.

“I didn’t leave you behind. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”

Felix holds Sylvain’s wrists, closes his eyes. He thinks, _I could stay like this forever._ When Sylvain finally kisses him, so softly it’s barely there, he thinks it again.

_I could stay like this forever._

Sylvain slides his arms around Felix’s shoulders, pulling his face into Sylvain’s chest. Felix wraps his arms around Sylvain’s waist. They stay like that, wrapped in the smell of tea and bread, the sounds of the estate muffled outside, for a long time.

There are more conversations, after. Felix has to be told he can’t just abandon House Fraldarius, which is easier once Sylvain shows him the room he’s had set aside for Felix since coming back to the territory. Sylvain is told there won’t be public kisses for a while, which makes him pout (it’s mostly for show, because it makes Felix flush so nicely). They are both told by people older and wiser that there has to be a schedule, that their territories still need leadership, that they cannot simply vanish into the sunset together.

This might be just as good, though.


End file.
